Emancipation Proclamation original copy, signed by Abraham Lincoln, sold at a New York auction for $2.1 million Wednesday. It’s onlt the second highest priced Emancipation Proclamation copy.

By Verena Dobnik, Associated Press / June 29, 2012

This undated photo provided by Seth Kaller, Inc., shows a detail from the rare original copy of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which sold Tuesday, June 26, 2012, at a New York auction for more than $2 million. It’s the second-highest price ever paid for a Lincoln-signed proclamation – after one owned by the late Sen. Robert Kennedy that went for $3.8 million two years ago.

Seth Kaller/AP/File

New York

A rare original copy of President Abraham Lincoln‘s Emancipation Proclamation ordering the freeing of slaves sold Tuesday at a New York auction for more than $2 million. It’s the second-highest price ever paid for a Lincoln-signed proclamation — after one owned by the late Sen. Robert Kennedy that went for $3.8 million two years ago.

This price and the one for the Kennedy copy are the highest ever paid for the proclamation, reflecting a “growing appreciation for documents that capture the most important moments in our history,” said Seth Kaller, a dealer in American historic documents and expert on the Emancipation Proclamation; he’s handled eight signed copies.

The document will go on public exhibit somewhere in Washington, he said. The name of the institution is yet to be announced.

Lincoln signed the proclamation during the Civil War, freeing all slaves in states then in rebellion. The proclamation also provided a legal framework for the emancipation of millions of other slaves as the Union armies advanced.

Forty-eight copies were subsequently printed, with Lincoln signing all of them.

The president donated them to the so-called Sanitary Commission, a precursor of the modern Red Cross that sold the documents privately to provide medical care to Union soldiers.